The options

Symbian

Symbian is an old operating system that was developed for pocket devices, what we once called PIM‘s or PDA‘s. It was designed for devices that had a keyboard or a keypad, that were low on CPU and battery.
For these reasons Symbian is VERY efficient on battery and CPU. Most of the UI was crafted to work well with a keyboard and a joystick. You might not know it, but in your Nokia N8, designed to be entirely touch and with no hardware keyboard, you still have a lot of keyboard shortcuts that you will likely never use. The Nokia E7 that is finally reaching the shelves now has a lot of shortcuts that you can use with your qwerty keyboard.
The N8, with a 680Mhz CPU, performs almost as well as most Android devices that use a 1Ghz or better CPU, because it’s highly optimised, but you will never know it, because the UI is too clunky (more on this later).

Unfortunately what users expect at the high-end, is not what Symbian can offer today. Many of us are used to recharging their mobile every evening, something that most Nokia customers don’t do. Modern high-end mobile devices are expected to be snappy, to have a great browser with device APIs and graphics hardware acceleration, support applications developed with a relatively high-level programming language that lets you create a decent application or game in a week or so.
Symbian was not designed for this.
Symbian^3 has a much better UI than before, mostly designed to support touch, but still with a lot of legacy menus and interfaces. The programming language is C++, with a lot of quirks and strange libraries. This is the result of 10+ years of evolution in a direction that is not what was planned back then. If you know Symbian and C++ very well, your application will have a raw performance that most other OSs can dream of, but unfortunately it will take you 3 months to develop, and not 3 weeks.
This is true for developers out there, but it is also true for Nokia. Despite how hard Nokia has tried to blow new life in Symbian, it failed because the development environment is just too complex.

Unfortunately for Symbian, its highly optimised environment has determined its demise.

MeeGo

MeeGo was developed from the positive experience of Maemo. Maemo was an experiment, but it showed a lot of strong points and a surprisingly vibrant community. MeeGo was built on the best intentions to bring a great new OS built for mobile devices of all types (netbooks, tablets, in-car entertainment, smart phones).
Unfortunately it has not delivered in the time frame that was needed to Nokia not to lose too much market share. iOS and Android devices are selling well, too well to keep waiting. Apple has iPods, iPhones, iPads and appleTVs. Android has loads of mobile phones, is coming to the tablet world and has the Google TV.
Nokia announced in 2010 that it would deliver at least one MeeGo device. Then very late in 2010 announced that it would arrive in 2011.
So far, we haven’t seen anything.

MeeGo is still a great promise, but unfortunately Nokia needs to sell devices today in order to develop a better OS, apps and platform for tomorrow.

WebOS

WebOS, is in my opinion a great OS with a very interesting approach with Web technologies as its development platform. It’s a great idea, that hasn’t really delivered for Palm. HP seems to be betting really big on it with the recent announcement of some very interesting devices in all ranges. That is fantastic for WebOS and HP might be able to work around the operators selling directly to the thousands of medium and large enterprises that rely on them for their servers, networks, printers and computers. It will be a great synergy I’m sure.

What does that offer to Nokia? Well, Nokia might have embraced it, but was HP interested? Probably too busy developing its own devices and integration with all the other services. HP certainly has a grand plan and Nokia might have been a distraction more than a valuable partner.

RIM with QNX

Similarly to HP, RIM has a foot in the enterprise business and something also in the consumer business. It has completed some very interesting acquisitions such as Torch mobile (which resulted in a much better browser in their blackberry OS 6) and TAT. They announced the Playbook tablet (a little too early IMHO) and are busy trying to get QNX to work on their devices starting with the Playbook tablet and later on mobile devices.

Similarly to HP, RIM is probably too busy completing its plans, to be bothered with Nokia. Let’s not forget that Nokia can be a great partner, but will also come with some strong requirements and big personality. At the end of the day Nokia has the infrastructure and experience to sell millions of devices per day, it cannot settle with a partner that will not have time for it.

Microsoft and Windows Phone 7

Of all the mobile OS’s installed on devices that are on the market today Windows Phone 7 is the youngest and likely the one that still has to prove the most. It has a nice new UI, very consumer oriented and it has the Microsoft hat, so you can expect good integration with their enterprise products such as Office and Exchange.
Yet, the browser is not great and while the development environment is the very well known .NET, it does not have a number of developers dedicated to this platform that can make their store very interesting.
Microsoft has been able to convince LG and Samsung to produce mobile phones and that’s great, but the sales so far haven’t been amazing.

Android

Assuming that Apple was not keen on letting Nokia use iOS, Android would have been the most obvious choice. Android is the most mature “modern” mobile OS after iOS, has a good UI, the second best marketplace and a vibrant, growing community of developers. I imagine that the conversation between Google and Nokia went like this:
Andy R.: “Hello Stephen, nice to see you. So you are interested in Android? Well, we think it’s great, we have a great OS, we have a fantastic UI and we have some of the best UI and UX expert in the world working to make it even better. Our developers love our open source attitude and love the Google cloud services. We have by far the best search engine, the biggest ad network and the best maps. You are welcome to take the source and run with it. What can you do for us?”
Stephen E.: “Wait a second, WE have the best maps, ours are vector based and much faster to download, plus we can preload them”.
Andy R.: “Stephen, we have vector maps as well, already deployed on Android 2.3 and even better in 3.0″.
Stephen E. stands up and walks out with a little teardrop.

What Nokia has on the table

So what could Nokia offer, as a partner, to these players that would make the cooperation more interesting for both? Nokia is by far the number one player in the low-end market and in most if not all developing countries. In India, China and South Africa Nokia is basically a monopolist. This is very cool and very good for Nokia’s cashflow, but not of great value for these high-end operating systems. Android is going down the chain of value, covering more and more segments, but it’s still not in the 50-70 USD price range where Nokia rules. All the others have requirements not even close to that price point.

Nokia has Symbian and a large portion of users that today have a Symbian device and will likely buy another smart phone in the next months. Providing a smooth transition is a key selling point (anyone wants to manually enter all their 1200 contacts in the next phone?).

With both the low-end and the high-end device segments come a lot of developers. It is true that Nokia is not the number one platform to develop today but being the number one vendor for more than 10 years means having contact with thousands of mobile experts. That is worth something.
Forum Nokia is of course the heart of the Nokia developer community and that means millions of pageviews per month.

Nokia has acquired NAVTEQ and maps have been an integral part of its strategy for the last couple of years. This is actually a GREAT asset as there are basically only two providers of raw cartography, Nokia and TomTom. With those come points of interest (shops, hotels, petrol stations, etc) and years of experience in navigation, of course.

Last but not least there is the Qt development framework. Android and RIM use Java, Microsoft uses .NET and WebOS is, well, Web. Apparently not very interesting, but don’t forget that Qt developers are normally highly skilled developers breathing Linux and open source software, writing cool hacks and advanced C and C++ in their sleep. That has a GREAT value for anyone that dreams of creating a healthy ecosystem with cool applications that will sell well and will attract customers to their platform.
Along with Qt comes QtWebKit, a port of the great WebKit engine to wrap in native applications. Anyone not taking that into account would be underestimating the power of Web technologies and the desire of Web developers to monetise their content.

Nokia also has a number of services, more or less successful such as Music, Share, contacts and social. I will not go into the details of each, but of course consolidating the users in any existing online service would be great for anyone. Think about Blackberry messenger on 200 million Nokia devices, or Microsoft Live messenger, or finally having someone to talk to on Google Talk. Although none of these is a critical element, they all add to the overall value. A value that Nokia does not want to throw away.

Conclusions

The Microsoft deal

So the answer to Nokia’s hunt for a partner is not necessarily who is the best operating system or platform, but rather which one is the best partner. Which one of those companies will get the greatest benefit from Nokia’s assets and which one will bring the greatest value to Nokia?
Nokia has survived more than 150 years going through multiple mutations, jumping from a market to another, building tires, televisions, PC monitors and boots and eventually mobile phones. While the main focus for the past 15-20 years have been mobile phones, Nokia has diversified its business, it owns NAVTEQ, has a foot in the music distribution business, a foot in advertisement and can provide a great platform to expand pretty much every possible business.

In conclusion Microsoft is the best partner for Nokia because not only it provides many pieces of the puzzle, but it also needs many other pieces.
The partnership with Microsoft will bring great integration in the Maps, IM, advertisement, search, location and more. Both Nokia AND Microsoft will give something to the relationship and both will get something out that they did not have before.
It is going to be tough because these are both very large enterprises that have been working on their own for many years and working together will be hard, but they probably both want to make this work.

The backup plan

Let’s not forget that although Nokia is now going to spend a lot of R&D resources to get as many WP7 devices on the market as soon as possible, it will also keep alive MeeGo and Symbian. If the partnership does not work, both parties can walk away and still might retain what has worked well.
This is what today looks like the most likely scenario for a win-win for both companies (yes, I am being cautious).

Now, if you are done reading it, I wonder if you agree with him or not. When I started reading and probably up to one third, I was not understanding where he was going to end up, but then I had a A-HA moment and all of sudden I realised what he means and I completely agree. It is something that has been in my mind for a while, but I was never able to put it down in words as well as Tim O’Reilly did. One of the reasons recently I’ve been paying particular attention to where I sign in, which cookies are in browser and where I go is that I can see where Google are going and how they are expanding their APIs and how developers are using them more and more. Google are amazing at how they are identifying growing trends, developing new technologies or acquiring companies and integrating their existing products. Add to this their release speed and you have an amazing juggernaut heading to the conquest of the Internet Operating System. They are obviously dominating the Web and you don’t need me to tell you that they are doing very well with APIs. Come in mobile devices and more in general mobile computing. Google have not left any base uncovered and they have the already successful Android and the upcoming Chrome OS. Then at the latest Google I/O the Google TV is announced in partnership with Sony, a company that has always tried to develop its own technologies and keep them as closed as possible. If they have given up to Google it means Google is giving them something that is worth a lot.

I read Tim O’Reilly’s post a little later from the original publication and just the day before the Google I/O. Since the initial read of the article the little gears in my brain have been running like mad thinking about the Internet OS and Google TV only added more steam to the engine.

Today I was catching up on Fabrio Capobianco’s blog and found The Google Chrome OS and Android conundrum. Of course he’s on the topic as well.

Android
Android has been very successful, I am not sure if Google expected it to be picked up so well and definitely HTC have done an amazing job. Yet, from a mobile device perspective, many still think it’s not as good as the iPhone. Of course, it’s a hard comparison as the iPhone is really a combination of MANY parts that go from the OS to the hardware to the iTunes store for apps and music.
Google are probably not there yet, they probably don’t have all the tiles in the right place, but they are improving and they have a train that is running fast with releases that come quickly and keep adding new features that put pressure on Apple. The hardware is not exactly Google’s responsibility, but there are so many devices coming from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, etc that at some point a winner MUST come, it’s just a matter of numbers.

Chrome OS
It is still unclear if Chrome OS will be a success or not and vendors have obviously decided to invest in Android for now as it’s a more mature platform. Chrome OS is an easy bet for Google and it plugs perfectly into their existing business model helping us, the users, to get more connected and more on the Web. As they did with Android, they are giving away something for free, in order to speed up the adoption of their existing services. It’s an investment to make sure that the extra money they can make tomorrow actually comes sooner (and they are in control).

Apple and the iPhone
As Tim O’Reilly points out in the second part of his article, it looks like Apple is not getting this thing of the Internet OS. I would add something, either they don’t get it, or more likely they think they are a consumer products company and all they want is build products. They develop or acquire technologies that will make their products better, but only key technologies and they either buy or partner with other companies for things that are less crucial. Think of Exchange, they finally (and rightly so) gave up on developing internally and just licenced it from Microsoft, they get better support and customers are happier. Other things that are more important like Maps, they acquire a company and you can expect the new iPhone OS to have them integrated in some way.
In my view, if Apple decide that they are happy to be a consumer products company, they will let Google go their way, compete where they have to, but not invest in other fields. They will not win the battle for the mobile world and I don’t think there will be a dominant player like Microsoft anyway and they will still be happy with their 5-10% of market share of wealthy customers. It’s not a bad market, Italian fashion’s fame is built around a few expensive brands and yet makes Italy famous in the world even if very few people will buy an Armani suit in their entire life.

Google wins anyway
Fabrizio Capobianco, in his post, says that Google would like Chrome OS to win, but Android is going too well and so they have to keep it going and improving and pretend they are happy about it. However these are only ways to accelerate something that is already happening, i.e. Google becoming the heart of Internet services or at the very least a major part of them. Either way, they are making sure they are a vital part of our lives for the next 10 years or more.

The future of computers
The end of my post would have been the previous paragraph, yet, I would like to add some thoughts on  why I think Android will win the race against Chrome OS.
Chrome OS is just a limited GUI with the browser and easy access to the Web. It is a way to help us understand that on the Web we can do everything we need.
On the other hand some are saying that the iPhone has proven that a new interface that comes from a completely different angle can be a winning UI compared to the old Windows PCs. Many pointed out that the iPad is a big iPhone and in a way it is and if you have used it, you will know that it’s very good to use, you can hold it easily, you can read well and it lives very well on your coffee table. This is a new way of using a computer at home and it is perfectly in line with the original plan of Apple 30 years ago of bringing a computer in our homes and let us enjoy personal life using it. It’s easier and more intuitive than a PC and it does almost everything that we need.
Android has the same approach. Google TV proves that it is climbing up the chain of home services.

This was true until today. With the WordPress Mobile Pack version 1.2.1 you now can get the best of both worlds. Here is a quick guide on how to achieve it. I am assuming you have installed the latest version of WP Super Cache, already.

1. Activate WP Super Cache
2. Go to the WP Super Cache options
In your admin -> Settings -> WP Super Cache
3. Turn WP Super Cache ON and mobile support

4. Click on Update Status
5. Scroll down and click on Update Mod_Rewrite Rules

6. Make sure WPMP is active
Go to Plugins -> Installed and activate WPMP if not yet active
7. Enjoy speed and mobile content at the same time!


Notes for the geeks
Setting up WordPress this way will generate some extra cache files because you will have a cached version for your desktop versions and up to 3 versions of your mobile site depending on the devices that visit your site. Don’t worry about this too much as Super Cache will clean up old files anyway and if most of your visitors are in the same device class you will not get the other cache files generated.
The integration works in a way that WPMP gives to Super Cache a new key to cache files, so that desktop and mobile pages are separate. Super Cache will be only partial (i.e. like the HALF ON setting) for your mobile content, but and send static HTML files for desktop (i.e. the ON setting). This is currently the best we can get, but soon it might be different, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, do not despair, you CAN get W3 Total Cache to work with the WordPress Mobile Pack and with other mobile plugins. If you know about mobile user-agents, the solution is to add keywords to the list of rejected user-agent strings. This will stop the cache to work completely on mobile, but at least it will produce content that is mobile friendly and all your PC visitors will still get the cached content. If you need a step-by-step manual, here is a very good one with images and examples, Blog Building: How to Configure W3 Total Cache to Work with WPtouch for WordPress.

For now, this is the best you can do. Stay tuned for more updates.

WP Super Cache is the best known cache plugin, if not the most famous plugin of all. Initially it did not play well with admins that also wanted a mobile presence and it is very simple to explain, the whole purpose of the cache is to generate the file dynamically once, store it and then serve it again without any further computation. As the years went by, mobile became more important and WP Super Cache integrated a basic mobile support. Recently donncha introduced a fundamental new feature, the ability for other plugins to define actions. I will not go into the details of how this works and what you can do, you can read all of it on the WordPress site.

The addition of actions is great for us, because we can finally determine how WP Super Cache detects mobile devices and we can extend it. As a matter of fact, this is what I just did and you can see the changeset in SVN. Expect a release very soon and all you will have to do is simply install the WordPress Mobile Pack. Once you will have installed the WPMP you don’t even need to enable the switch for mobile in WP Super Cache as the WPMP integrates with it automatically. With this combination you will get the WP Super Cache to work as usual for normal browsers and robots (including the Super Cache mode*) and then with the standard WP-Cache implementation for mobile. All this works just fine even enabling the cool Nokia extensions that we have released a couple of months ago.

Go enjoy WordPress with mobile support at lightning speed (UPDATE: we have released a new version of WPMP, read how to configure it at Go mobile with WP Super Cache and the Mobile Pack).

* Note: in order to use the full Super Cache and mobile you will still have to use the rewrite rules for mobile

When I was at home the other day I noticed an unused plate stand that seemed perfect and in fact IT IS perfect for my iPad. Here is a picture:

Also, you can find as many as you wish online and if you get it in clear plastic like mine you won’t even notice it. Looks perfect to me!

Don’t forget to check out the WordPress Mobile Pack, of course!

I don’t know if it was this one that was particularly good, but there are so many positive things that I’ve experienced at this event, that I strongly recommend you to go as soon as you can. You have gone already? Then go again!

If you don’t know what happens in a WordCamp, then here’s a quick list of things you can expect. To start off, it’s not a conference for geeks only, it’s about blogging and writing good content to publish on Internet. I admit you will likely meet a bunch of geeks, but you will also meet a lot of “normal people” that are passionate about Internet and want to get their ideas online. The general attire is very relaxed and equally the socialization is very easy going.

I have been to a number of conferences and this was easily one of the best and I’m saying so because I have a long list of things I have learnt and things I’ve heard and that now I was to learn better. This is probably the best outcome that you can get from a conference.

Small disclaimer: I was one of the speaker and not surprisingly I was talking about mobile, but for once, not to mobile nerds. Presentation coming to the Internet very soon.

The theme is really a theme on steroids! While normally it should just deal with printing out to screen a few tags and content, in my case I had to add a number of functions for device detection. We wanted to be able to distinguish between a basic mobile device and a high-end one, plus we laid down the foundations for a mid-end presentation. Since the Mobile Plugin did not provide the level of detail that I needed, I had to create my own functions that at this stage are mostly overriding what the plugin does. A lot of the experience made with the WordPress Mobile Pack was put to good use, fortunately.

You can check out the official project page to download the files. Also, check out the handbook page for installation details and if you feel too lazy to read, why not look at the video tutorial?

The work is not over, the plugin is good, but I think it could do better and for this reason I’ve teamed up with the author, Teemu, and we will release some interesting updates such as a new light detection and some extra extensibility that should allow template designers to have more freedom.

Feedback is very welcome, of course, either here or on the Drupal site.

The Mobile Plugin normally uses a PHP implementation of the WURFL API, unfortunately on a cheap hosting service (I bought dreamhost’s CHEAPEST possible offer on purpose) this crashes the server. So for this demo I started implementing what is in my view the next step, a very basic device detection that will enable site owners to decide what they want to do. If they have a lot of content optimised for different devices, they should pick WURFL and use the advanced rules settings available in the plugin, on the other hand, if they want a basic detetion and provide just two or three layouts, a simple detection should be more than enough. With the current demo version, no cache files are generated and the detection is instant. I would like to make this part of Mobile Plugin, eventually and better integrate the device classification that I built in the nokia_mobile theme.

More on device classification in the next days.